Foretaste Design

I studied Furniture design as my second degree at California College of the Arts. After finishing my first degree in China in Engineer Management, I left everything be- hind, came to US to start over in this new area, where my passion lies. Furniture, for me, is the best blend of my two favorite fields, design and visual art. I express myself both in the design and the working process and enjoy playing with the balance between function and aesthetic. It is a way for me to explore my inner-self. Each of my artworks has its own story, showing different aspects of my personality. I feel they can speak for me better than myself can do.

Traditional furniture is treated as a dead object. People use it, but they don’t see it. I see my furniture as sculpture which refresh the mind and create emotional connections. I create a sense of paradox and mystery in my furniture so that people will not take their existence for granted. These objects will live in people’s homes as art pieces with a distinc- tive identity and personality and also serve as functional objects.

For me, a designer’s job is to explore eternal and immutable beauty, which is why pure geometric form is the most important theme in my design. A perfect circle, square, rectangle, triangle or straight line, these basic geometric shapes they are from the natural world but they don’t exist there − they are the abstractions of the natural world. I reduce everything to basic and simple geometric forms and leave a lot of blank space. Only lines, planes, basic forms and a large amount of space are left in a room, which creates a world of purity and perfection. Moreover, lines, faces and forms occupy space differently and their interactions with each other in space create tensions and dynamics.

Absence is another key component in my work. I appreciate the negative space as much as the form itself. I explore different materials, combinations and arrangements in my design, which create different feelings interacting with the environment around them. They are extremely simple, but within this simplicity lies a whole diverse universe.